True stories about splendid serendipity….Splendippity.

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Stoner’s Steer

Our neighbor Judy had two dogs named Bigfoot and Danny and a goat named Rammy. Every morning before work she would get Rammy out of the barn and walk with all three in the field between our homes. The dogs and the goat would play and run around together with Judy following behind.

One morning as my husband and I were getting ready for work I looked out the bathroom window and saw a fairly large cow running through the field between our place and Judy’s. “There’s a cow running in the field!” I said to my husband, Steve.

Steve looked out the window and said, “That’s not a cow, it’s a steer.” He grew up on a farm and he knew such things, to me it just looked like a large brown cow.

Running behind the cow steer were Danny and Bigfoot, both barking frantically, followed by Rammy, who was struggling to keep the pace. Judy, dressed in her nightgown, was running behind all of them yelling at the dogs, “Bigfoot, no! Danny, no! Come!”

But her yelling did no good, the dogs were focused on the steer and running full-bore after him. Soon, the steer reached the end of the field and ran through the box wire fence that surrounded the field. He ripped the box wire off of the posts and once out of the field, turned left and ran off down the center of the road.

At that point, Bigfoot, Danny and Rammy stopped chasing the steer and turned around and ran back to Judy who was standing there, staring at the hole in her fence. Steve and I were both laughing very hard at that point and I yelled to Judy through the open window, “Hey Judy! Nice cow!”

“It’s not a cow, it’s a steer!” Steve yelled, as we both laughed.

Judy looked up at the window and said, “It’s not mine! I don’t know where it came from but look what it did to my fence!”

At that point, a very slow-moving car came down the road with an arm hanging out of the open driver’s side window holding some rope that was drawn up into a circle. Judy recognized him. It was Mr. Stoner who lived nearby on a road that t-boned off of ours. She yelled to him, “Stoner, are you looking for a lost steer?”

“Yes,” he said, “Have you seen him?”

“He went down the road that way,” Judy said as she pointed south, “He busted up my fence, what are you going to do about it?”

Stoner said nothing and drove off in the direction Judy pointed. “He better fix my fence,” she yelled up to me and Steve, “I’m so pissed. Lookit that hole!”

After chatting some more and agreeing that Stoner, the one neighbor we all have but wish we didn’t, probably would not fix her fence, Judy put Rammy in the barn and headed into her house and Steve and I continued getting ready for work.

On my way to work that day I stopped at Pansy Hill, a small convenience store that both Judy and I usually stopped at each day on our way to work. Because of the steer incident, Judy was running a bit late so I arrived at the store before her. As I was checking out, I was laughing as I told the cashier, Carol, what had happened that morning. Before leaving, I suggested to Carol that when Judy stopped in on her way to work, that she should ask her if she knew where she could get a good price on a side of beef.

After work that evening Judy came up to the house. She said, “I was so angry this morning that I was seeing red. I mean, I was really, really mad. And then I stopped at Pansy Hill and Carol asked me if I knew where she could get a good price on a side of beef.” As I started to giggle, she continued, “It was only then that I was able to laugh about what happened and thought how funny it must have looked to you and Steve with me in my nightgown chasing a goat, two dogs and a steer through the field. Thank you for that. It made me laugh and I’ve been able to laugh about it all day.”